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Women work without a break for their families, society, and friends all through the year. So, on IWD 2016, LEAD conducted their 3rd annual "Recognizing the Unrecognized", where women in our society who are rarely recognized but are responsible for important work were recognized for their contributions, such as cleaning railway stations, bus stands, picking household trash, selling vegetables etc. LEAD and LEADers believe that, without these women, our communities would come to a standstill.

The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. To that purpose, the LEaders Accelerating Development (LEAD) Program of the Deshpande Foundation was born. LEAD develops innovative and entrepreneurial thinking within college students by exposing them to social issues, encouraging them to volunteer their time and effort into the community, and igniting their latent talent to come up with creative solutions. Through this unique platform provided by LEAD, students are gaining the skills and confidence needed to transform their visions into realities. Armed with guidance, exposure, networking opportunities, financial assistance, and encouragement from LEAD, students from throughout 75 colleges and 14 districts are unleashing their leadership potential to go on inspiring and improving those around them.

The 6th Yuva Summit, an international youth conference on leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship hosted by the Leaders Accelerating Development program, began in Hubballi on 6th February with Mr. Ravindranath Gumaste, Managing Director of Kirloskar Ferrous Industries Ltd., cutting the ceremonial ribbon that let the hundreds of attendees, including students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and honoured guests, into the event grounds.

On 24th January, 107 promising students from across Karnataka and neighbouring states descended upon the VTU campus in Belagavi to mark the kick-off of the 5th annual LEAD Prayana. These students, along with 32 beginning their journey on the same day in Nizamabad, were selected from a pool of almost 500 applicants. LEAD Prayana, which began in 2012 with just 63 students, is an annual leadership journey that takes almost 150 passionate students between the ages of 18-26 throughout India on a 14-day tour across Karnataka...

I am passionate about science, especially physics. My affair with Science started during my childhood and it deepened in my high school when I started participating in Science exhibitions with my models. During Pre University Education, I built the Levitation Train with few of my friends and grabbed prizes at several competitions. “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Kaku was a book that exposed me further to the vastness of the science and motivated me to start a science group called “Blackbody Science Group (Which Absorbs All Wavelength of Intuitive Minds)”. This group engages in creating interest about science among government and physically disabled school children.

“To be successful and to grow in life, one has to move out of their comfort zone and should be ready to feel awkward and uncomfortable”

I was a NCC cadet during my school days which taught me to be disciplined even during the toughest times. The skill of focusing on the goal developed during training of NCC got me “Best Firer Award”. I gradually got inclined towards technical domain which led me to pursue engineering for my under graduation. The knowledge gained in the classes of engineering got my brain thinking to solve the problems of society through technology.

I had several innovative ideas which I wanted to implement but didn’t know where to begin. During this time I got to know about LEAD through few of my friends. I found LEAD to be the ideal platform to express my ideas and turn my ideas into working models.

The first project that I implemented was Hydrogen kit. It was designed by combining the knowledge of chemical engineering, thermal engineering and material science engineering. In this kit, hydrogen and oxygen of water are separated continuously by electrolysis process. KOH solution acts as an electrolyte. When electricity is passed, the molecules of the water get separated. The positively charged hydrogen ions is collected at the cathode and negatively charged oxygen is collected at the anode. Then hydrogen and oxygen is passed through a series of piping system, valves, filters, and flow meters into the engine cylinder through inlet valve. Inside the cylinder, hydrogen combustion also happens along with the fuel. (Hydrogen combustion is the process by which hydrogen reacts with an oxidizing agent and burns). Hydrogen combustion is exothermic combustion, which means it releases heat and energy. Hydrogen gas is highly flammable and will burn in air at a very wide range of concentrations between 4% and 75% by volume so it helps to produce the power required to run the engine.

Benefit of using hydrogen as a fuel is that a complete combustion take place as compared to the gasoline engines. This results into increase in engine efficiency and 30% more output from the engine. It also reduces the pollution due to complete combustion of the fuel.

This project was a great success. I exhibited this model at Yuva Summit held at Deshpande Foundation. It won me BEST LEADer Award from Kailash Satyarthi. I presented a paper on this model and was certified as Speaker at the Eleventh International conference on "eLearning for knowledge–based society" held at Bangkok, Thailand.

Along with providing support, LEAD set me thinking in entrepreneurial direction. Hence, I decided to take my model further ahead and prepared a business plan with this model. I presented this model at techno entrepreneurial event “TALAASH” held at KLE Institute of Technology and got a seed fund of Rs 1,00,000/- to establish my start up with this model. Thus my journey of becoming an entrepreneur has begun.

After the success of this project, I designed Hydrogen Wielding device applying the learning of my first LEAD project. This uses hydrogen as fuel and reduces the dependency on LPG gas and acetylene. The additional challenge that I faced during this project was controlling the hydrogen flow and fire. To overcome this challenge, I used transformers to control the electricity in electrolysis process.

Thus my journey with LEAD has made me innovative, bold and confident. It has taught me that when faced with a challenge one has to look at all directions for the solution and there will be surely a solution for all problems.

LEAD has given me the courage and confidence about my capacity of turning my dreams into reality.